I’ve made a video of my presentation (23.6 mb) for Friday afternoon at the Computers and Writing Conference. It took a while to figure out that I wanted to riff off of something I had presented at my first computers and writing conference in Missouri. There I talked about MUDs and the constraints/transcendence of language, at least that’s what I thought I was talking about. I’m reminded of Colin’s recent post on dissertations now—thinking about that twelve-year-old presentation reveals to me how true it is that writers never realize their limitations until some time later. There is an old copy of that paper linked to a broken article back in Texas

But that presentation matters to me because I tried to weave in something personal, something expansive in the prose and metaphor. And it really matters because John Slatin afterward told me to trust my ideas, to do more with the metaphors and language play. It was a powerful suggestion that I had forgotten, and remaking the piece has helped me savor it once again.

In the video for this year’s conference I repurpose the bus stop metaphor and use less prose, more sound, and some images. The video itself simply makes the point that instructional materials need to emphasize composing over consuming new media. (I’m not sure how much longer one can get away with that angle in these presentations, but still it resurfaces for me.)

The video also hopes to open some questions, including,

Why is there so little collaboration between programmers and content providers in most electronic text production models?

Does the power of autonomy and individual authorship undermine collaborative paradigms?

How much new media composing practice must authors of instructional materials have?

What should be the role of familiar pedagogical terms and structures in new media instructional materials?

What limits and benefits derive from the print biases of current electronic materials?

How can publishers facilitate projects that enable more new media composition for authors and students?

These are all good questions, but more than anything I want to open a metaphor. A word. Door.